Dawn, Twilight, and Dusk of Beginnings in Greek Mythology and Philosophy

Abstract

A select few of “beginnings” among the Greeks are Homer’s “Oceanus”, Hesiod’s “Chaos”, Anaximander’s “Boundless”, Parmenides’ “Being”, Plato’s “Form of the Good” and Aristotle’s “Contemplation”. Sequentially capturing an account of various beginnings in Greek mythology and philosophy, this article opens with Homer’s “Oceanus”, an elemental water-based beginning, and reaches its closing stage in Aristotle’s “Contemplation”, a conceptual beginning. Mythological beginnings of Homer and Hesiod have the characteristic of birth, philosophical beginnings of Plato and Aristotle, have the characteristic of causality, while the pre-Socratic beginnings of Anaximander and Parmenides hold a unique place of their own - they seem to be a likeness of both yet at the same time are discernable from them. This article is structured in three sections: after a brief introduction distinguishing mythology from philosophy, a description of Greek beginnings in mythology and philosophy is given in sequential pairs i.e. Homer/Hesiod, Anaximander/Parmenides and Plato/Aristotle. Finally, the conclusion presents the significance of sequentially capturing Greek beginnings in the metaphor of “dawn, twilight and dusk” which exhausts what they considered as visible and expressible.